Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

8/20/21 UPDATE: EO Media Group (the owners of the paper) say the story was prematurely posted online, and that it should be running FRONT PAGE sometime next week! Hooray!

The La Grande Observer sent a reporter to interview me on August 6 about my protest against mass incarceration, which was GREAT. The article was published on August 14 (along with a dope photo, if I do say so myself), which was also GREAT. Then, the story was inexplicably UNPUBLISHED! Which was NOT great. As of today (August 19), I've left two messages with Andrew Cutler, the editor of the paper, asking for more information about why the story was taken down, but he has not responded. So! I've taken matters into my own hands. Here is the story read aloud in its full glory, with standard Evy Wallace interjections. Enjoy! Share readily!

*The Sugar Skull* EXCERPT: I set up my phone, hit record. But something felt… different. “I know I’ve been calling these meditation videos,” I explained. “But that doesn’t feel entirely true. “Meditation” doesn’t feel like the most accurate word. There is a word, satsang, that translates to “meeting with truth,” but I don’t like to use Sanskrit because it feels like it keeps people out. It’s like if you don’t speak that language, you’re not invited. I haven’t come across a word in English yet that means the thing that I like to do in making and sharing these videos.” I paused. “I think maybe it’s time to tell the story about Marshall.” Until I said it, I didn’t know it was coming. (You can STILL see this video on my Youtube channel, under the title "If It Glows Together, It Goes Together!")

*Who's Your Daddy?* EXCERPT: Some of my girlfriends raised their eyebrows when I told them the plan, but they knew better than to tell me I was nuts. I wasn’t stupid! I’d survived a good long time in this world walking the road less traveled. Clare admonished me gently when I told her about Mr. Florida: “Ok, if you think that’s safe, godspeed. But I’ll tell you something, Evy, about why I like you as a friend: you’re the opposite of boring.”

*Manhattan, Manhattan, Manhattan* EXCERPT: Online degrees were a dime a dozen, especially those with religious affiliations, so it would have been easy peasy if I self-identified as Christian. But because I was unwilling to earn a degree from a Christian institution, my 4,000 options dwindled to approximately four. And two of the four were Harvard and Yale. So, mere acceptance was already looking like a pitfall. Then, assuming I could jump the hurdles of getting into these schools, the shortest program would take over two years and require a semester or two of prerequisites. Then, assuming I could figure out how to disappear into academia for three years, there was the matter of tuition. Three years of my life and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt? No, thanks. Not this time around.

Author's Note: Hey, sorry guys! I accidentally deleted the old Chapter 20 instead of just updating the audio file, but I've replaced it here in its full glory.  I hope that doesn't throw a wrench in your listening chronology, but I have faith that you are all clever enough to figure out how to get from one chapter to the next in the right order, even if the dates of release are a little wonky. Thanks for your patience!

*That's Private* EXCERPT: So. It was looking like the institution of private property was a real problem. Private property allows us, one human to another, to say “this is mine, you aren’t allowed to physically exist here, even if you need to sleep, even if you need to eat, even if you need to piss. If you exist here, I can call men with guns who we have collectively agreed have the authority to take you away. Or if I choose to let you exist here, you must give me money. If you don’t, I’ll call the men with guns to take you away.” And when every last parcel of land across the globe is protected in this way, even the “public” land, where does that leave the human people who want to opt out of the money game? Private property effectively outlaws the lifestyle of a nomad, or a hunter-gatherer, or a guru. I myself was willing to work hard and give my life’s energy for the betterment of humanity, and I would have been happy to do it for free… that is, if I could survive in this world with zero dollars. 

*Giving Thanks* EXCERPT: This would be my first NFL experience, and I was moderately excited to do a thing I’d never done. But I’m not going to go into the details of how the Giants lost to the Redskins that day, or how institutional racism is so embedded in American culture that an official NFL team can still call themselves the “Redskins” with impunity (or could do so in 2017), or my discovery that an important component of spectator sports is shit-talking, or that most people really do seem to need booze in order to unbutton their inhibitions. I’m not going to speak more on any of those things because the most important event of the whole trip was what happened in the car on the way back from the game.

*The Sex Club* EXCERPT: In theory, I was familiar with the concept of a spank bank, but I had never consciously cultivated my own inner reel of sexually-charged moments. This was probably because I’d been so ashamed to have sexual thoughts in the first place, especially if the sexual thoughts involved fucked-up cult sex, like in Martha Marcy May Marlene. But how unhealthy was that? I was a thirty-six-year-old human adult and I was ashamed of having sexual thoughts? What the fuck, right? Are human adults not supposed to have sexual thoughts? Or are they supposed to be only vanilla, traditional sexual thoughts? Or are we supposed to have sexual thoughts but just never admit to or act on them?

*Jingle Bells* EXCERPT: We spent the rest of the weekend engaging in hilarious, articulate, informed discussions about everything with Madeline and the village. We visited her classroom and got introduced to her reptiles: there was Houdini the ball python, Milkshake the milk snake, ET the red eared slider turtle, and Frogzilla the African clawed frog. We explored the area, from the Padgetts' back yard to the Vassar campus to the extended Hudson River Valley. As an engineer, Jingle Bells was overcome by the superlative height of the Walkway Over the Hudson. He was almost delirious. “WOW!” he said over and over again, with the sheer astonishment that is usually heard out of the mouths of children. “Do you understand how much work it takes to build something this tall? I mean… we never build anything like this anymore. I mean… WOW! It’s so high! Wow, Evy! Look how high we are!” 

*Things Fall Apart*  EXCERPT: If the grocery store was a strikeout, the rest of the week was a losing streak. One of the reasons I’d been so attracted to Little Jack was his willingness to dominate me. As a good feminist, I’d never known I was allowed to want to be dominated. It was never a spoken rule, just an assumption: strong women can’t be held down by men. But, as a lover in Los Angeles later told me, “I’ll hold you down, but I’ll never hold you back.” I’d come to terms with the fact that I was turned on by being dominated. Our bodies are the highest of high-performance vehicles, and, while it’s thrilling to be in the driver’s seat, it’s a novel thrill to sit shotgun; the power of submission is in choosing who you hand the keys to. I am of the mind that lots of us know this to be true even if less of us are willing to admit it. In any case, Little Jack now seemed either unaware of my desire to be dominated or unwilling to act on it, which stood in marked contrast to that blissful afternoon when he’d tied me up back in La Grande. For the record, he had bought fuzzy handcuffs, so I think he thought he was trying to take the lead; we used them approximately once, then they lay dormant. And the thing about wanting to submit is that you can’t just ask for it: asking for it is a form of taking control, and the full dose of bliss comes from not being in charge. 

*Much Ado*  EXCERPT: I was traveling Southwest, my favorite little airline. What makes this scrappy little discount company such a treasure, you wonder? I’ll tell you why. First, they’re just friendly. And that matters. But also, it’s because Southwest made all the right policy choices in all the right places. For starters, they don’t charge you extra for checked luggage, so as long as you pack with that policy in mind, you can kiss all that will-there-be-room-for-my-carry-on anxiety goodbye, not to mention the will-this-suitcase-fit-in-the-airport-bathroom-stall-with-me anxiety for we solo travelers. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.